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#NeverAgain Students Furious After Broward County Implements 'Policy' to Combat Shootings

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In the wave of hashtags we’ve seen over the past few years, #NeverAgain might rank up there with the most self-indulgent.

People who have not a whit of knowledge regarding how firearms work are now convinced they can make public policy to stop school shootings, mostly regarding banning so-called “assault weapons.”

The hashtag has gained particular momentum in Broward County, Florida, where the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting took place last month. While all sympathy goes out to those who were affected by it, their grasp of policy to make schools safer seems to consist of two words: ban guns.

So, when the superintendent of Broward County Public Schools announced the new policy to prevent school violence, effective at the end of spring break, it got a whole lot of #NeverAgain students pretty riled up. Patricia Mazzei, The New York Times’ Miami bureau chief, tweeted about it:

The Daily Wire collected some of the better Twitter freakouts over this one — including from some of the pro-gun control students that the media has chosen to make famous.

https://twitter.com/lexforchange/status/976651034339758085

Now, let me first state I’m not entirely in disagreement with what some of these students are saying. Without being provided evidence or case studies that show these policies work, clear backpacks and ID badges — all at taxpayer expense — sounds like an exceptionally dumb and expensive example of security theater that makes it look like those responsible for student security are doing something without actually doing anything.

This all being said, most of what the members of the #NeverAgain troupe are proposing isn’t wholly different. Believing that banning certain guns will stop school shootings — as opposed to a modernization of the background check system, paying greater attention to mental health red flags and making schools harder targets (which would include hiring trained armed security — is mostly an act of making people feel better as opposed to doing anything productive.

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Do you think this will make schools safer?
Clear backpacks are not going to stop a gunman with any weapon who decides to take aim at a soft target, especially one where the armed school resource officer isn’t willing to intervene. Neither will banning so-called “assault weapons.” Both are wastes of time and money that basically infringe upon people’s rights while doing nothing to make them safer.

Most of these #NeverAgain individuals won’t recognize the irony, and they don’t have to. In particular, those who experienced and survived this horrifying event shouldn’t really ever be expected to, given the horror that they witnessed. (However, one can certainly object to the cynical way in which they’re constantly trotted out as sages on public policy.)

For the rest of us, the new initiative by the Broward County Public Schools superintendent should be an object lesson in why doing anything to look like you’re doing something in the wake of a disaster will almost always backfire.

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C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).
Birthplace
Morristown, New Jersey
Education
Catholic University of America
Languages Spoken
English, Spanish
Topics of Expertise
American Politics, World Politics, Culture




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